The early playoff projections for Oklahoma have already exposed a problem the College Football Playoff needs to get ahead of.
At the start of July, national outlets began rolling out their 2026 CFP and bowl predictions, and twice the Sooners landed in the same kind of spot: back in the playoff, only to be handed another SEC rematch in the opening round. That’s a tough setup on paper, and it would be a familiar one for OU after last season.
Oklahoma’s 2025 run ended with a home loss to Alabama in the first round of the CFP. That came only a little more than a month after the Sooners had snapped the Crimson Tide’s home winning streak in Tuscaloosa, which was the longest in college football at the time.
Even with everything tilted against them, OU showed it was better than Alabama. But the Tide still got another shot after sneaking into the playoff with three losses.
That’s the part that sticks: once a team has already proven itself in the regular season, the rematch puts the winner in the awkward position of having to do it again.
Now the same kind of bracket is showing up in 2026 predictions.
Bill Bender of Sporting News projected Oklahoma as the No. 9 seed against Ole Miss, with the Sooners losing again in the first round. It would be another rematch from just about a month earlier, and this time Bender had the Rebels taking advantage of home field and beating OU twice in the same season. That may be how the projection shakes out, but it still leaves Oklahoma in a spot where it has to face a team it already handled once before, instead of getting a fresh opponent from another conference.
Athlon Sports went down a similar road, slotting the Sooners into an 8-vs-9 SEC rematch with Texas A&M in Norman. In that version, Oklahoma finally gets its first CFP win and beats the Aggies for a second time in 2026. Even so, it’s still the same basic issue: a massive playoff game being set up around a matchup that was already decided during the regular season.
That’s not great for fans, and it’s not great for the sport. If the expanded playoff is supposed to keep regular-season games meaningful, then those results need to carry weight.
When the committee keeps steering teams into repeat matchups, it makes those earlier games feel pointless and blunts the whole point of the format. It also gets in the way of what the playoff is supposed to do in the first place: sort out the best team in college football.
Maybe it sounds like too much to make of preseason projections. But Oklahoma has already lived through it once, and that makes the warning sign pretty hard to ignore.
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Sooners Duo Gets Overlooked Despite One Edge Nobody Can Ignore
John Mateer and Isaiah Sategna III may not have cracked the very top tier in On3s latest quarterback-wide receiver duo rankings, but their place on the list still says plenty about what Oklahoma has coming back in 2026. J.D. PicKell slotted the Sooners pair at No. 10, a nod to both their proven chemistry and the fact that Sategna was the most productive pass catcher on the roster last season, finishing as the teams leader in receiving yards and touchdowns.
What makes the ranking stand out is how much of the conversation above Oklahoma is built on projection rather than actual game reps. Several of the duos ranked ahead of the Sooners have yet to log meaningful snaps together, while Mateer and Sategna already have a season of timing and trust behind them. For a program trying to climb back into the national discussion, that kind of continuity can matter just as much as flash, and it gives Oklahoma a real argument even if the outside ranking leaves a little room to prove more. [Read more 🡒]
Sooners Finally Have Hope At Linebacker But One Concern Lingers
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The bigger issue is what comes after those top options. Depth remains a concern, with injuries and inexperience still shaping the backup chart and forcing Oklahoma to be careful about how it handles the rest of the room. Even with more hope at linebacker than the Sooners have had in a while, the question is whether they have enough behind the first wave to survive the grind of a season. [Read more 🡒]
Kalen DeBoer Faces A Brutal Alabama Test Heading Into 2026
Oklahomas place in the 2026 national-title conversation starts with the same thing so many Sooners seasons do now: the quarterback. John Mateer gives Brent Venables a real chance to make noise if the offense can hold up around him, and that means the line in front of him and the ground game behind him have to be better than they were a year ago. If those pieces come together, Oklahoma has enough around the edges to at least belong in the expanded playoff discussion.
Venables also has a defense that should travel, and that matters in a 12-team field where surviving a few ugly stretches is part of the job. The path is still narrow, though, because the Sooners are being measured against a crowded group of programs trying to break through for a first title under their current coach. For Oklahoma, the question is not whether the defense can keep it close. It is whether the offense can do enough to turn that into something bigger. [Read more 🡒]